


Sick

by linosity



Category: South Park
Genre: Fluff and Humor, I don't know how to tag this, M/M, Sort Of, coincidence??? i think not, did you know that kyle rhymes with denial, healthy and possibly whipped!stan, sick!kyle, some canon content, vulgarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 10:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16406762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linosity/pseuds/linosity
Summary: Thinking isn't as easy when you have a fever, or at least that's what Kyle told himself.





	Sick

Kyle woke up to a burning sensation in his cheeks. 

Having feebly covered his face with his hand, the sunlight pierced into his eyes through the gaps between his fingers. His disaster of a fringe clung to his forehead and sweat trickled down his jaw. His mother was yelling somewhere downstairs—the kitchen, probably—but none of her words made any sense. They didn’t matter, however, because the throbbing in his head was too much for him to even see the point in processing and deciphering those muffled syllables anyway. Was it a school day? He hoped it wasn’t as he stretched his legs, but quickly gave up. He didn’t want to move, or maybe he couldn’t; the ache in his arms now spread to every other part of his body, like his non-existent muscles had been set on fire.

He groaned. It was just too difficult to move.

“Kyle! Kyle?” His mother’s shrieks were becoming louder, clearer. He winced—he should have gotten used to it by now. “Young man, you’d better get down and eat right now or I will—Oh, my goodness! Kyle, what happened to _you_?!” He must be in really bad shape, given the horrified gasp that came from his mother upon storming into his bedroom.

In no time at all she had one hand pressed against his forehead and the other grabbing his arm that he just realized had been dangling off the bed. He wanted to talk, he wanted to ask if it really was a school day, but even when his mouth fell open to speak, nothing came out aside from a low, pitiful croak. He was already an ugly mess, and this just made it worse.

Instantly, his mother gasped again, jerking her hand back. “Kyle, you’re burning up,” she whispered. Sure, like he couldn’t figure it out for himself.

“You,” his mother pointed at him, and he coughed. “Be a good boy and stay in bed. I’ll get some medicine right now, just don’t move, okay?” Kyle nodded feebly, and his mother left the room. As her steps trailed off, his phone started to buzz on the nightstand. Mustering all the energy he had, his hand crept towards the nightstand and wrapped its fingers around the phone, which continued to buzz in his grasp.

It was an incoming call from Stan, and Kyle placed the phone by his ear.

“Kyle, where are you? The bus is here.” Stan’s concerned voice crackled over the speaker, and it was then that Kyle regretted being sick more than ever. _“Don’t bother about me, I’m sick and dying”_ was what he wanted to answer, but those words didn’t come out right as he made a series of constipated noises into the phone.

“Dude, are you okay? You sound like you’re dying.” Nailed it.

“… I’ll text you!” Kyle finally managed to wheeze out some words and he hung up, quickly switching screens to text Stan.

_im sick_

**Stan**

_oh shit_

_sorry i shld have texted_

_its ok you wouldnt hv known anyway_

_have fun at sCHoOL_

**Stan**

_HA what fun_

_i’ll come over when im done with school ok wait for me_

_your super best friend is gonna save the day_

_lmao sure_

_this is going to be the only thing i’ll be capable of doing today_

**Stan**

_hey at least you dont have to see cartman’s face today_

_you gotta admit thats a good thing_  

Kyle snickered between coughing fits. He could have been much worse off, given the police department visit the last time he gave in to yet another of Cartman’s stupid ideas. His mother’s hysteric screeches that day, dragging him out of the police department as he worried about his ear potentially tearing apart—he couldn’t possibly forget that. Rubbing his ear, he typed a quick response and placed his phone back on the nightstand.

The silence hung in the air for a while, and he sat up. From the window he could spot the leaves of the nearest tree that gleamed from the morning dew. School buses passed by with kids on their way to school, and the cars were leaving their garages as the working hours began. He was watching the town bustle into life, life that had been drained out of him since he cracked open his eyes this morning.

Kyle groaned, thrashing his arms against the bed as violently as he could. This turned out to be a terrible decision as the aches shot up his arm and he flinched, plummeting back into the bed with his head buried in his pillow.

He had absolutely nothing to do. He couldn’t play with Ike because it’s apparently a school day and Ike should have left for kindergarten by now; he couldn’t watch any television programs because that would mean going downstairs, and neither did he have the energy to do that nor was he willing to risk getting caught by his mother when she gets back from the pharmacy. 

If Kyle did have the stamina, however, he wanted to be out there with his friends. He would do anything; he would even get into Cartman’s stupid ideas because they would eventually become those many things they would laugh and joke about on their way home. Kenny would snigger through the thick fabric of his parka; he and Stan would have their arms slung over each other’s shoulder, roaring with laughter over all those past misadventures; Cartman would interrupt their guffaws with a dismissive yet defensive wave of his hand since those misadventures were mostly his fault.

The redhead slapped the pillow half-heartedly before letting his limp arms slip off the bed. Stan must be having so much fun out there.

***

“Kyle, you look terrible.”

It was the first thing Stan said once he burst into Kyle’s bedroom, and Kyle scowled. It was afternoon, and even though Kyle still ached all over and felt the gunk in his throat, he felt much better than he had been in the morning. Kyle had taken his medicine after lunch, which worked wonders now that his body temperature dropped significantly; he had also taken a shower upon his mother’s permission and changed into clean, dry clothes, which was a big relief from the soaked pajamas he had woken up in.

“Your mom just left to fetch your brother, I think. She told me to watch over you, like make sure you don’t leave your bed and stuff.” Stan was fumbling through his schoolbag. For what, Kyle couldn’t possibly know. The redhead hadn’t really noticed it until now, but Stan’s hair had grown to be a bit long as it swept across the cuffs of his windbreaker with the tilt of his head. His hat had already been taken off, and the redhead noticed how his fringe dangled from his forehead as he dug deeper into his bag. His hair might as well grow into a mullet. How would Stan look in a mullet?

It was then when the raven-haired boy looked up, looked at him, and Kyle’s imagination screeched to a halt before it could even begin. He shouldn’t think about it, he couldn’t bear to think about it.

“Really,” Kyle muttered instead as he coughed into his raised hand. Somehow it was clammy again, despite having already showered after lunch.

Stan pulled out a thin stack of stapled paper from his bag before dropping the bag beside the bedroom door. “Your homework,” he explained as he placed the worksheets on the nightstand and sat by Kyle’s bed, and Kyle groaned for the umpteenth time. “Can’t you just keep it, Stan? Then I can say that I’ve never seen it before and I won’t have to do any of it." 

“It’s not staying in my bag forever,” his best friend retorted as he grinned, and somehow Kyle believed, just for a moment, that he could just melt under all that radiance. “You didn’t miss much of school today, by the way.”

“But I still missed something, right?”

“The lessons. You’ll catch up soon enough.” Stan tilts his chin towards the stack of homework lying on the nightstand, and Kyle rolled his eyes. Then Stan chuckled as he rested his head against the side of Kyle’s mattress, his laughter somehow reminiscent of the warm afternoon sun that melted some of the snow in the neighbourhood away. Somehow, Kyle couldn’t help but stare at Stan’s almost-mullet hair nestled in the corner formed by his bed and the nightstand, he couldn’t help but watch those dark locks shake with every quiet laugh.

How would it feel? How would it feel to run his fingers through those locks? How would it feel to rub those tufts of hair together and watch those strands slip through the gaps in his grasp?

Kyle blinked, perplexed by his own intrusive thoughts. There was really no way for him to explain them all, because he had never had them before. The last time he met Stan, they were down in the living room playing _Guitar Hero_. He remembered the beads of sweat that slid down the raven-haired boy’s jaw as he threw his hands into the air, flashing a triumphant grin before screeching like those heavy metal singers after the last epic chord was strummed. A part of him didn’t really believe that beating their previous highscore was worth getting so excited. Nevertheless, it was because of Stan, with his vigorous hand gestures and ceaseless sofa jumping, that Kyle found himself grinning as well. As the redhead chanted some extravagant background music, he presented his guitar console to his guffawing best friend like an offering to the gods; and a most fitting offering it was, they just beat their _Guitar Hero_ highscore after all.

Above everything, he remembered Stan’s eyes that twinkled under the lights as the raven-haired boy burst into laughter upon receiving the guitar console, he remembered jumping on the sofa together as best friends trashing a living room with their high-pitched screaming and other terrible rock star imitations as they celebrated the greatest moment in their short lives. That’s how he remembered it: best friends, and nothing more.

 _Best friends_ , Kyle thought as warmth crept up to his cheeks and his fingers shot up to touch them instead. His fever was not going down.

“… What about Cartman? What did he do this time?” Nothing really came to the redhead’s mind besides stupid small talk; the fever must have fried his brain. Even as he tried to play it off with a casual smile, he was pretty sure that he looked more lethargic than relaxed given that he was basically a sweltering lump of human cells sagging into the threads of his bedsheet. 

Stan raised his head, and before Kyle knew it a pair of dark orbs were staring at him, adorned with the bright flecks of the afternoon sun. Rubbing the back of his neck, the raven-haired boy said, “He was jotting down something in the bus, it seemed like another dumb plan to me. I don’t remember the rest, and I have no idea what he did after school. Since, uh, I came here to see you.”

Kyle was blaming everything on his fever at this point. He knew it was a stupid move, but he knew too little about these emotions that clenched his chest and sent jolts throughout his body to feel comfortable with them, yet he did. It bothered him, but he couldn’t afford to deal with it right now, not when Stan, his super best friend, was right before him and about to discover exactly how big of a mess he really is.

“Dude, your face is like, really red. Do you need water or something?” With that, Stan stretched out his hand. The redhead felt the faint warmth graze his shoulder and he shifted his gaze to his best friend’s fingers that lay there, gently tapping against his skin. Somehow, the miniscule shifts of Stan’s hand sent shudders down his spine even though he knew Stan was just being the kind person he always had been. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, and Kyle realized that Stan would be able to feel that pounding as well, now that they were connected with a hand on a shoulder. Stan would be able to know exactly what was going on; and as best friends, of course he deserved to know.

Kyle wanted those fingers off his shoulder nevertheless.

“Stan, I—” Kyle began before succumbing to a coughing fit, and the warmth on his shoulder vanished as Stan withdrew his hand, visibly alarmed. “I’ll get you some water right now,” he said as he got to his feet and dashed out of the room.

As the steps trailed off, Kyle released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Why did he have to feel this now, among all times? His mind was too much of a mess to even think clearly, and he needed help. At this, the redhead’s fingers scrambled to get his mobile phone and he quickly dialed the number of the only friend he could think of and trust in this singular moment of desperation, before pressing the phone to his ear and waiting awkwardly during the seconds that followed.

The beeps stopped. “Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded like a calling from the gods, and Kyle sighed in relief. “Yes, hi Kenny, there’s—”

“Wow, you really do sound terrible. No wonder Stan said you couldn’t come to school today.” Kenny snickered, and Kyle pursed his lips. Just when he thought his voice sounded better than it did in the morning. “Shut up Kenny,” the redhead snapped. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Okay, I’m listening.” He could hear Kenny stifling a smile at the other end.

The line went quiet for a while. Kyle’s mouth was open, but the words seemed to have gotten stuck in his throat. Even the softest utterance was a declaration that this was real, that he was really thinking about this, that this actually mattered to him. He didn’t want it to matter, he wanted these emotions to be insignificant enough to brush off and never be reminded of again in the future, then maybe he could live with this relationship he had with Stan, and maybe he would stop questioning it with time to come.

“Hello? Kyle?”

Fuck it. “Right. Uh, Kenny, do you think I like Stan?”

There was a deafening burst of laughter from the other end, and Kyle silently counted his blessings for not dropping his phone. “You! Do _I_ think…!” Kenny wheezed. “What the fuck, Kyle!”

“Answer the question, Kenny. Stan’s about to come up any minute now.” Kyle gritted his teeth. He regretted this decision already.

“Oh, so Stan’s with you? Stan, your super best friend, now upgraded to a crush you don’t even know you have! Batteries not included.”

“So you think I have one?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. You literally do anything Stan wants you to do, and you even do it together most of the time. Like Siamese twins, you know? Joined together by the hip. Besides, the two of you ditch us and hang out together way too often, even for super best friends. There has to be something going on.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I like him—”

“Like who?” A voice cut through the conversation, and Kyle jerked up, startled. Stan was leaning against the bedroom door, holding a bottle of water and a plate of digestive cookies, looking at Kyle with an unreadable gaze as the said boy immediately hung up the call and shoved his phone onto the nightstand. Before he knew it, the raven-haired boy was by his bed, placing the plate onto the nightstand before taking a quick glance at Kyle’s phone. Kyle even caught his eyes flitting up to stare at him, probably; maybe the fever really was messing with his mind.

It wasn’t until Kyle felt a gentle tap on his arm that he realized he had been tensed up all this while, and Stan was tapping him with the bottle of water that, as he also realized, was warm. Grabbing the bottle, he quickly uncapped it and gulped down the water as if he wanted to drown his feelings in it, before stuffing a digestive cookie into his mouth and avoiding all eye contact with Stan. That didn’t mean he couldn’t feel his best friend’s gaze on him, boring into his skin, and his chest clenched that much more.

As Kyle swallowed the last bit of cookie, Stan didn’t hesitate to break the silence. “Who was that?” He asked.

“Kenny.” At least that sounded coherent.

“Okay,” the raven-haired boy nodded, bending down to sit by the bed. “Then who did you say you like?”

Curse him for being so straightforward. Kyle was about to turn his head to make a snarky comeback when he came face to face with Stan, staring at him again with those dark, indecipherable eyes. He knew that his best friend wasn’t the offensive type, but he couldn’t help but feel vulnerable before him, especially now when their faces were less than half a metre apart. “Nobody,” the redhead ended up mumbling.

All of a sudden Kyle found his hands in Stan’s grasp, and the said boy gave them a gentle, encouraging squeeze. “Come on, Kyle, I heard you,” Stan urged, the afternoon glare flickering in his stare. “You said you like ‘him’. If you told Kenny who he is, can’t you tell me? We’re best friends, Kyle, aren’t we? Super best friends.”

 _“You’re my super best friend.”_ He remembered saying to Stan that time at Washington, he himself drenched from head to toe and Stan in his typical brown jacket and relieved smile. The title had gone beyond an imaginary rank of honor to him back then, in fact it was exactly because of this that he valued it so much: they were three words that belonged to only the two of them, Stan and Kyle, and only their relationship deserved to be crowned with this title. No one else could match up to their level of friendship, and no one else was closer to Stan than Kyle. But no matter how great their friendship was, it was still a friendship, and it couldn’t possibly go any further than that. After all, Stan wanted them to be super best friends as well.

However, at this point it still wasn’t too late for him to turn back, to make a dismissive joke and perhaps make Stan laugh so hard that he would put this aside, and they can choose to never mention it in the future. Sure, they might get a bit more awkward, but this is merely a sacrifice he would make to keep this friendship between the two of them; because ultimately having a friendship with Stan is better than having nothing with him at all.

Maybe it was the fever, or maybe it was the part of him that had been pointing the middle finger at everything recently, but he just couldn’t stop himself.

“I think I like you, Stan.”

It was barely above a whisper, and if Stan wasn’t so close he wouldn’t have heard it, then Kyle would be able to actually get on with life and cast it all behind him. But they were right next to each other, with Kyle’s two limp hands captured in Stan’s reassuring grip that was beginning to loosen. The raven-haired boy’s eyes widened and his mouth fell agape, just slight enough to indicate to Kyle that he was screwed.

“Stan I’m so sorry for pushing this onto you but you asked for it and you were looking at me like that and I’m actually not thinking clearly right now because of this stupid fever and honestly I’m still very confused about all this so I need time to figure it out oh God now that I think about it I really shouldn’t have said it to you it’s really not fair to you oh God I’m sorry Stan I’m _so_ sorry—” He couldn’t help but freeze mid-sentence, suddenly hyperaware of a warmth spreading across the side of his cheek and the weight of a hand cradling his jaw. The gaze in Stan’s hooded eyes seemed to brighten as he gave the softest smile Kyle had ever seen on Stan’s face before. In that moment, it seemed like cancer was cured and the world was at peace, like it wasn’t conspiring against him by shoving him into one of the most awkward conversations he’d ever had, and Kyle was just going to casually ignore the fact that it wasn’t the world’s fault, but his own for making terrible decisions in a terrible state. The pounding in his ears slowed nevertheless, as the redhead let himself indulge in the comfort of that small smile.

“I’ve always wanted to do this, Kyle, but I didn’t know if it was okay for us to do this until now,” he murmured, and Kyle felt his cheeks burn for the umpteenth time. “Don’t say that you’re pushing this onto me because I’ve been wanting to hear it from you as well. It’s okay to think about it, I just want you to know that I’ve been liking you for quite a while now and we can start dating whenever you’re ready, because I sure as hell am.” With that, Stan flashed him a silly grin, and Kyle felt a smile making its way onto his own face as well. “And I thought you wanted us to be super best friends, Stan.” 

“You suggested it first,” Stan teased before giving the redhead’s cheeks a quick pinch. Kyle’s face morphed into a look of shock and betrayal as he immediately stretched his hand out to give the raven-haired boy a taste of his own medicine, but Stan was leaning too far back and his limbs were too weak for him to leave the bed, so he reached for a digestive cookie instead. Two cookies, in fact, and Kyle held one out towards his tentative best friend, who leaned in and took it gratefully.

Kyle could’ve taken his revenge right then. A part of him, however, wanted to revel in this comfortable silence between them, now that things were somewhat settled between the two of them and all he had to do was to take some time to think things through. With that, the next few minutes were spent munching on cookies and doing pretty much nothing else, just Stan and Kyle hanging out in a germ-saturated room on a typical school afternoon while trees rustled and cars rumbled by.

Their eyes occasionally met, to which Kyle cleared his throat loudly and promptly turned towards the open window, finding the old bricks of their neighbour’s house much more fascinating than anything else around him. Stan, on the other hand, just chuckled as his thumb drew small circles on the back of Kyle’s hand that somehow found its way back to the raven-haired boy’s grip, or maybe it was him who took hold of it while Kyle was engaged in his critical duty of cookie eating. It was impossible for him to know, he was too ill to put his mind to it after all. 

Kyle made a mental note to call Kenny again the moment Stan leaves the house.

**Author's Note:**

> i love how i wrote my second sp fic a year after my first sp fic with absolutely no improvement in my writing whatsoever
> 
> i didn't really write this while having fluff or angst or any specific mood in mind, and essentially i wrote without thinking in general so this fic is quite a Mess
> 
> once again pls comment so i know where i'm going thank you
> 
> tumblr: paraboline.tumblr.com


End file.
